Passage

"Hold on...

Hold on to your self,

This is gonna hurt like hell." --Sarah McLachlan

There's no short way.

Move through it

Like moving through a fever--

Move through it

Like waist deep water--

Dark below,

Dark above.

The night is full of tigers.

Oh yes,

They have broken hearts, too;

Tooth and claw no more use than

Vapor

Against these enemies

Whose names are

Pain

Loss

Fury

Hopelessness.

Lay down with them all.

Lay down with tigers.

In the morning, you'll rise up off their sleeping warmth

With stripes of ambivalence and experience

On your body, too.

Go stumbling back to the farm.

They'll know you are not the same.

You'll know it, too.

The night will stay with you

In every black stripe,

But when the fever breaks

And the tide goes out,

You can walk through the world as a woman again--

In the noon,

Tomorrow, or next week or next year,

Someone will see you and say,

"Oh,

You are so beautiful."

You will dip your head,

And once again it will be your choice

What you want to do.

__________

Thank you to the tigers, who continue to inspire me.

Birmingham Nursery Rhyme

I was brought up right--

I carry my mother in a little box

Wrapped in cotton

Under locks.

Weebles wobble

But they don't fall down--

Somehow I survived

A little angry, but alive.

It's just that, if you poke me.

I'll poke back.

Trust me, Pokey,

Gumby that.

I'm polite.

I say, fuck off please.

I wear no ink.

I believe in grace, poise, and a well-timed wink--

I carry a sap...

But it's pink.

__________

The Year That Began With Ravens

The year that began with ravens

Ends with sparrows.

I think my life

Is a candle in a paper boat;

Never meant to last.

The year that began with ravens

Has tested me

In ways I can't explain,

But nameless music

Can be as sweet as a split apple

Or as bitter

As an empty room.

The year that began with ravens

Spared a teasing taste of honey--

An aviary June.

The year that ends with sparrows

Leaves me humble

With just a jar of coins.

I think my life

Is a candle in a paper boat;

Never meant to last--

A sparrow in that twilit place

Where despair and peace are joined.

________

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from the Succubus, Chloe, God, The Queen Of The Vampires, Denise, Danny, Fireblossom, and everyone at Danny's Coffee Shop.

Free coffee all day!

_________

Picture: Emily the Strange

The Pinnacle Of All Human Achievement

The Joan Jett Barbie. Oh hell yes.

___________

For G.

A tree decides not to hate the ground.

"She could not have received you, my straying leaves,

Had you not let go of me first;

Not once,

But a thousand times.

You spread yourself over her as if she were precious,

But I think

She was just close by

And besides,

You had already fallen as far as you could go.

What good does it do me

To be so constant?

My arms are full of emptiness

All the same."

A tree decides not to hate the ground.

After all,

Spring, and fullness, will come again in time--

Still, each ring

Leaves her older

Though stronger,

And at night, in Winter,

She dreams of bending without a care,

Green again in a sweet breeze

Of June and the way things were.

_______

The Lorelei

"Everybody's somebody's fool" --Connie Francis

The Lorelei is brought into Maritime Court, charged with luring sailors to their deaths with the beauty of her voice.

A jury of her peers is empaneled, but disqualified when The Lorelei testifies in her own defense,

And nine of the jurors throw themselves over the rail to sit at her feet

Where she pets them like so many Pomeranians.

An all-female jury replaces the first one, but still, five of them pass The Lorelei impassioned notes,

Suggesting meetings after they have seen to her acquittal.

"Objection!" thunders the prosecuting attorney. "The defendant is to blame for dozens of shipwrecks and the loss of life and property!"

"Oh sure, blame the woman," mutters The Lorelei, rolling her eyes.

In the end, she cannot be convicted.

Even a bench trial fails when, upon hearing The Lorelei promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and so on, the judge drops his gavel and proposes to her on the spot.

She refuses him.

The Lorelei becomes a media darling.

On E! she is asked why she isn't blonde, as traditionally depicted in art and illustration,

And her silent scorn is potent enough to send the interviewer, a former soap opera hunk, away in tears.

The Lorelei decides to grab lunch at Danny's Coffee Shop.

She sits at the counter and tries to chat up the chick next to her, just because she can;

But she is ignored, which has never happened before, and The Lorelei gets flustered and drops her keys.

Chloe, born on a sunny Sunday in May, says,

"God what a ditz. Pick those up."

Chloe is the heart-breaking murderess of Danny's Coffee Shop, and has never felt sorry for a single thing she's done.

Look at her eyes--they are

Untroubled,

Beautiful,

Disturbing,

Feline.

For the rest of the afternoon, The Lorelei sits at Chloe's feet like a Pomeranian.

Despite the ruin it will bring, she cannot help herself.

From The Lorelei's glass of water,

A thousand sailors laugh

And sing songs honoring Chloe,

Their unexpected Queen

Of ironic revenge.

____________

Those unfamiliar with Chloe can find her here.